Currently Listening A Collection of Songs: Recorded 1995-1997 By Bright Eyes see related

I have learned to love poetry from the Dominion Lit. classes.

--Here is one my my favorites

The Hollow Men

By T.S. Eliot

I.

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

II.

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer --

Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

III.

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

IV.

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

V .

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow

Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

Currently Listening In the Reins By Iron & Wine, Calexico see related

imo, Iron and Wine produces some of the best lyrics of our time...

The Trapeze Swinger

    by Iron & Wine

please remember me, happily
by the rosebush laughing
with bruises on my chin, the time when
we counted every black car passing
your house beneath the hill, and up until
someone caught us in the kitchen
with maps, a mountain range, a piggy bank
a vision too removed to mention

but please remember me, fondly
i heard from someone you're still pretty
and then they went on to say that the Pearly Gates
had some eloquent graffiti
like: “we'll meet again” and “fuck the Man”
and “tell my mother not to worry”
and angels with their great handshakes
but always done in such a hurry

and please remember me, at Hallowe’en
making fools of all the neighbors
our faces painted white, by midnight
we'd forgotten one another
and when the morning came i was ashamed
only now it seems so silly
that season left the world and then returned
and now you're lit up by the city

so please remember me, mistakenly
in the window of the tallest tower
call, then pass us by, but much too high
to see the empty road at happy hour
gleam and resonate just like the gates
around the Holy Kingdom
with words like: “lost and found” and “don't look down”
and “someone save temptation”

and please remember me as in the dream
we had as rug-burned babies
among the fallen trees and fast asleep
beside the lions and the ladies
that called you what you like and even might
give a gift for your behavior:
a fleeting chance to see a trapeze-
swinger high as any savior

but please remember me, my misery
and how it lost me all i wanted
those dogs that love the rain, and chasing trains
the colored birds above there running
in circles round the well, and where it spells
on the wall behind St. Peter's
so bright with cinder gray in spray paint:
“who the hell can see forever?”

and please remember me, seldomly
in the car behind the carnival
my hand between your knees, you turn from me
and said the trapeze act was wonderful
but never meant to last, the clowns that passed
saw me just come up with anger
when it filled the circus dogs, the parking lot
had an element of danger

so please remember me, finally
and all my uphill clawing
my dear, but if i make the Pearly Gates
i’ll do my best to make a drawing
of God and Lucifer, a boy and girl
an angel kissin’ on a sinner
a monkey and a man, a marching band
all around the frightened trapeze-swinger

nah nah nah, nah nah nah nah …

So, I think the song is about a person trying to find his place in life, experiencing the happiness and dissappointment (ups and downs like a Trapeze Swinger).  It is the story of his life, and his search for salvation and what is good, in a lost world.  The spray-painted words on the gates to the kingdom of heaven represents the voice of the lost.  I do believe that the singer/writer from iron in wine is a Christian, but he points out realities and hypocrisies in the world, as well as those who are "Christian."  This song is not nearly as heathen as it appears to be at first glance.

I wish this was British, so I could write my analysis paper on it....it would be so easy and enjoyable.  This is one of my all time favorite songs.

Here is another good song:

Sixteen, Maybe Less, Maybe a Little More

     by Iron & Wine

Beyond the ridge to the left, you asked me what I want
Between the trees and cicadas singing round the pond
I spent an hour with you, should I want anything else?

One grinning wink like the neon on a liquor store
We were 16, maybe less, maybe a little more
I walked home smiling, I finally had a story to tell

And though an autumn time lullaby
Sang our newborn love to sleep
My brother told me he saw you there
In the woods one Christmas Eve, waiting

I met my wife at a party when I drank too much
My son is married and tells me we don't talk enough
Call it predictable, yesterday my dream was of you

Beyond the ridge to the west, the sun had left the sky
Between the trees and the pond, you put your hand in mine
Said, "Time has bridled us both but I remember you too"

And though an autumn time lullaby
Sang our newborn love to sleep
I dreamt I traveled and found you there
In the woods one Christmas Eve, waiting

Currently Watching The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra By Dan Conroy, Brian Howe, Fay Masterson see related

A Poem of the Future

(for seniors)

Identical faces

Identical times

Identical places

Identical minds

I thought I'd be ready for the new

Without farther adieu

Different settings and places

Of identical faces

Though Ill miss the old

I have yet to behold

A life anew

In a college or two

Ill visit my past

So my memory will last

To not forget those

And senior lunch at Moe's

Friends I hold dear

Add to my surmounting fear

That from whence I go to learn

I shall never return

Set your gaze on the steeple

Lest we become different people

I desire to keep in touch

Though complications prove to be much

How I love the

Familiar faces

Familiar times

Familiar places

And Familiar minds

Currently Watching Good Will Hunting see related

 In Good Will Hunting, this is Sean, the therapist, talking about his wife who had died.  I find it pretty interesting.

           WILL
           Do you ever wonder what your life would
           be like if you never met your wife?
                        SEAN
           What? Do I wonder if I'd be better
           off if I never met my wife?

Will starts to clarify his question.

                        SEAN (cont'd)
           No, that's okay. It's an important
           question. 'Cause you'll have your bad
           times, which wake you up to the good
           stuff you weren't paying attention to.
           And you can fail, as long as you're
           trying hard. But there's nothing worse
           than regret.
                        WILL
           You don't regret meetin' your wife?
                        SEAN
           Why? Because of the pain I feel now?
           I have regrets Will, but I don't regret
           a singel day I spent with her.
                        WILL
           When did you know she was the one?
                        SEAN
           October 21, 1975. Game six of the
           World Series. Biggest game in Red Sox
           history, Me and my friends slept out
           on the sidewalk all night to get
           tickets. We were sitting in a bar
           waiting for the game to start and in
           walks this girl. What a game that
           was. Tie game in the bottom of the
           tenth inning, in steps Carlton Fisk,
           hit a long fly ball down the left
           field line. Thirty-five thousand fans
           on their feet, screamin' at the ball
           to stay fair. Fisk is runnin' up the
           baseline, wavin' at the ball like a
           madman. It hits the foul pole, home
           run. Thirty-five thousand people
           went crazy. And I wasn't one of them.
                        WILL
           Where were you?
                        SEAN
           I was havin' a drink with my future
           wife.
                        WILL
           You missed Pudge Fisk's homerun to
           have a drink with a woman you had never
           met?
                        SEAN
           That's right.
                        WILL
           So wait a minute. The Red Sox haven't
           won a World Series since nineteen
           eighteen, you slept out for tickets,
           games gonna start in twenty minutes,
           in walks a girl you never seen before,
           and you give your ticket away?
                        SEAN
           You should have seen this girl. She
           lit up the room.
                        WILL
           I don't care if Helen of Troy walked
           into that bar! That's game six of the
           World Series!

Sean smiles.

                        WILL (cont'd)
           And what kind of friends are these?
           They let you get away with that?
                        SEAN
           I just slid my ticket across the table
           and said "sorry fellas, I gotta go see
           about a girl."
                        WILL
           "I gotta go see about a girl"? What
           did they say?
                        SEAN

          They could see that I meant it.
                        WILL
           You're kiddin' me.
                        SEAN
           No Will, I'm not kiddin' you. If I
           had gone to see that game I'd be in
           here talkin' abouta girl I saw at a
           bar twenty years ago. And how I always
           regretted not goin' over there and
           talkin' to her. I don't regret the
           eighteen years we were married. I
           don't regret givin' up couseling for
           six years when she got sick. I don't
           regret being by her side for the last
           two years when things got real bad.
           And I sure as Hell don't regret missing
           that damn game.

A beat. Will is impressed.

I'm trying to figure this out.  I'll write it as a direct statement, though it is comming from me, and for anyone that knows me, knows how fallible I am...it is easier for me to write it this way.  Comment with your opinion.  Sorry if it seems like I'm rambling.

Without the bad, you cannot have good.  Things that are now known as good would only "be."  So, one could not do good without the existance evil. 

God is the Creator of all things.  He created the Garden of Eden with the option of man to sin against Him.  He must have placed the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garded of Eden, knowing that man would partake of the fruit and fall into damnation.  I have trouble with this concept, but I suppose however much free will has cost us, it must be worth it if God gave it to us. 

Before the fall, man had only seen good.  Man did not know evil.  People are always intrigued by what they dont know, and i guess they always have been.  So everything they did just "was" (to the finite man--it was not known to them as right or wrong).  The one thing that they did not have was evil, they did not know anything about it, besides God's commandment not to eat of the tree.

Man's curiosity drove them to eat the fruit of the tree.  I dont think the tree in and of itself had the power to grant the knowledge of good and evil, but that in the breaking of God's only commandment, evil became known to man through the entrance of sin into the world.  There was now a scale to judge moral decisions on.  There was a good and a bad.

Think of the grief and depression Adam and Eve must have felt?  Knowing that their decision has tainted all of humanity. Just try to imagine...they were in a world that knew no pain, no death, no struggle, nothing bad at all.  and then Bam!...they are slung into a world (the one we live in today) with everything being corrupt and knowing it was their fault.

Interesting...any one of us put in their place would have made the same mistake.  We sin every day and any one of the sins we commit are in likeness to the sin of Adam and Eve.  Any one of them would have sent the world into corruption, and ban humanity from the Garden of Eden.  Sin is not only a personal revult against God, but its effects are wide-spread across all of creation.

Shouldnt we feel the same grief that they felt?  I would think it would only be right that we did...but we dont.  I dont think that we should look at Adam and Eve as anything less than what we are.  They are not worse than us just because they did it first.

I'm just trying to refine my views and my time at Dominion seems to be the opprotune time to do so.  Please post comments with your opinions.